A McGill team studying the progression of neuroinflammation and tau aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has received $1.5 million in follow-on funding (FOF) from the Weston Family Foundation.
This research is co-led by: Dr. Pedro Rosa Neto, Associate Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry at McGill University, affiliated with the Douglas Research Center.and Yasser Iturria MedinaPhD, assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill and Montreal Neurological Institute Hospitals.
Through a previous Weston Family Foundation grant, Dr. Rosa Neto and his team are researching how the inflammatory response suspected of driving brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease can spread tau pathology across brain regions and lead to cognitive decline. discovered that it plays an important role. Further details on this conclusion can be found in many publications such as: Nature Medicine 2023 and JAMA Neurology 2023.
For a follow-on funded project, Dr. Rosa Neto aims to better characterize the natural history of these neuroinflammatory responses by following participants recruited through a previous research grant for an additional three years. Masu. Her clinical, imaging and body fluid biomarker data will be collected and analyzed using advanced artificial intelligence techniques in collaboration with her co-Principal Investigator Iturria Medina. This study will provide important insights into how to design effective therapeutic interventions to reduce the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Weston Family Foundation, through the Weston Brain Institute, supports research that accelerates the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases of ageing (NDA). The Institute provides seed funding to high-risk, high-reward ideas through its core Spark Phase program. However, given the long development timelines for NDA medical innovations to make a real-world impact, additional investments are required to scale successful projects from seed funding programs towards clinical impact.
The Follow-On Funding Program was created to provide additional funding to current or past Institute grantees to begin scaling up previously identified and validated innovations and technologies.